TAGGED AS: Comedy, Horror, movies
The action-horror comedy Anaconda is set to hit theaters this Christmas, and the first reviews are now available online. Paul Rudd and Jack Black star in the movie, a meta sequel to the 1997 cult classic of the same name, alongside Steve Zahn and Thandiwe Newton. This sixth installment of the franchise follows a group of friends attempting to remake the original, and many reviews celebrate how it sends up creature features of the ‘90s and the reboot-driven Hollywood of today. However, it might be difficult to appreciate the 2025 Anaconda if you haven’t seen the 1997 Anaconda.
Here’s what critics are saying about Anaconda:
It is probably too much hyperbole to call Sony’s Anaconda the funniest movie of the year, but for my money, it really is.
— Pete Hammond, Deadline Hollywood Daily
I’ll readily admit that this being one of the funniest movies of the year was not on my bingo card, but here we are.
— Peter Gray, The AU Review
Anaconda gives us something that has been missing from movie theaters: actual jokes.
— Spencer Perry, ComicBook.com
When it’s funny, it’s genuinely funny.
— Roberto Tyler Ortiz, Geek Vibes Nation
It’s trying harder on the comedy side, and succeeding somewhat more often… but shaggy pacing does no favors to jokes that are only kind of amusing to begin with.
— Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter
Anaconda isn’t without charm, but it is without mirth.
— Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle
The jokes practically write themselves, which is why it’s surprising that there aren’t more of them… Most of the comedy is of the slapstick variety.
— Peter Debruge, Variety
The anaconda is gloriously over-the-top without losing its sense of danger. The balance between comedy and danger is surprisingly well judged, allowing the film to oscillate between absurd set pieces and moments of genuine tension.
— Peter Gray, The AU Review
It’s a good thing Anaconda isn’t meant to be a horror movie, because the few times it tries for such moments, it’s not great at it.
— Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence
Never outright scary… Anaconda’s thrilling moments work only as jolting jump scares to keep the audience engaged until the next joke.
— Spencer Perry, ComicBook.com
Gormican just doesn’t seem very comfortable with horror — or with killing off his characters, for that matter.
— Peter Debruge, Variety
In the second and third acts… the horror elements feel like obligations.
— Roberto Tyler Ortiz, Geek Vibes Nation
This Anaconda eschews horror almost entirely. While the serpent is bigger this time, it’s far less menacing, good for a few jump scares but not much else.
— Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter
Regrettably, the one star of Anaconda that gets the shortest shrift is the most important one: the snake.
— Mark Hanson, Slant Magazine
The end result is a movie far less scary than its campy 1997 predecessor, but far funnier — on purpose.
— Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence
Ironically, the original 1997 Anaconda—which played everything straight—is at least ten times funnier than this intentionally comedic version.
— Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network
It doesn’t come close to replicating the deranged pleasures offered by Llosa’s 1997 original, which still holds up as one of the craziest big-budget studio productions you can see.
— Maxance Vincent, Loud and Clear Reviews
It will make you wish you were watching Anaconda 3: Offspring instead. OK, maybe it’s not that bad.
— Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle
Those looking for an updated thriller, unafraid to crush more than funnybones, should look overseas to a 2024 Chinese reinterpretation.
— Don Shanahan, Every Movie Has a Lesson
What makes Anaconda work is its razor-sharp meta self-awareness. This is a film that understands exactly what the original represented, how it’s been remembered, and why anyone would want to revisit it in the first place.
— Peter Gray, The AU Review
So much of the humor and structure depends on knowing that movie’s reputation, its excesses, and its place in late-’90s genre cinema. Without that context, the meta elements may feel thin, or to an extent even confusing.
— Roberto Tyler Ortiz, Geek Vibes Nation
If you’ve seen the original, you’ll appreciate a few delightful callbacks to it; if you haven’t, it doesn’t matter much.
— Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times
The script understands that nostalgia only works if it’s earned, and it saves its cleverest callbacks and reinventions for moments that genuinely land.
— Peter Gray, The AU Review
The script, which Gormican penned with Kevin Etten, spends a fair amount of time parsing whether it’s a reboot, a reimagining, or a “spiritual sequel” to the 1997 movie, when in fact, it’s a ballsy all-of-the-above treatment of the material.
— Peter Debruge, Variety
If nothing else, Anaconda earns a few points for originality.
— Mark Hanson, Slant Magazine
Pretty much nothing in the film from the moment Black, Rudd, and company touch down in Brazil makes any sense.
— Matt Singer, ScreenCrush
There are touches throughout Anaconda that stretch believability…however, it’s also a movie that invites you to put aside such concerns and just enjoy the antics.
— Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence
It’s a love letter to the passion for making movies, as well as the semi-talented souls who bet their lives on doing so.
— Bob Strauss, San Francisco Chronicle
It’s clearly made by people who love movies.
— Roberto Tyler Ortiz, Geek Vibes Nation
Anaconda is far better as a moviemaking comedy than a horror remake.
— Joey Magidson, Awards Radar
It does have some funny things to say about the tendency of Hollywood to fall back on remakes and reboots.
— Spencer Perry, ComicBook.com
In a world where the lacerating corporate filmmaking satire The Studio already exists, broad jokes about wacky animal trainers and ego-driven actors trying to influence their projects to benefit their own roles just won’t cut it.
— Matt Singer, ScreenCrush
This isn’t Tropic Thunder, where the filmmaking in-jokes are justified by the story’s industry adjacency. It’s Anaconda, a movie that thinks it’s making fun of everything Hollywood does wrong, but really, it’s just exposing its own flaws ad nauseam.
— Siddhant Adlakha, Inverse
The action scenes are competently staged, but they lack bite. You never really believe these characters are in serious peril, partly because the tone doesn’t allow it.
— Roberto Tyler Ortiz, Geek Vibes Nation
The weightless and unimaginative action feels less cinematic than theme park-y.
— Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter
It’s visual sludge, with haphazard staging…perhaps squinting through action set pieces helps distract from how sloppily assembled the whole thing is.
— Siddhant Adlakha, Inverse
The action is so clumsy as to suggest that studio execs should have engaged a second unit to handle the snake-attack scenes.
— Peter Debruge, Variety
The anaconda barely makes an appearance, and when it does, the sequences are short and too frenetic to be impactful. Even action set pieces without the snake are shoddily assembled, with awkward editing.
— Josh Parham, Next Best Picture
The VFX work here is first-rate rate as are all the big ass snakes employed to play the real deal.
— Pete Hammond, Deadline Hollywood Daily
There isn’t much to say about the obviously CG-created snake from the movie’s title, but it just doesn’t have the same effect as the animatronic snake from the ‘90s movie, which was absolutely terrifying.
— Edward Douglas, The Weekend Warrior
The snake is so poorly rendered by the VFX team that it would embarrass the producers of Anaconda mockbuster MegaBoa.
— Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle
Thankfully, Anaconda is blessed with a charming cast that can still generate a chuckle out of even the hoariest of gags.
— Mark Hanson, Slant Magazine
The actors bring enough charm to be endearing, with most of the core ensemble players being captivating in their screen presence.
— Josh Parham, Next Best Picture
All four leads are very game to look very silly, and I applaud them for that.
— Matt Singer, ScreenCrush
Jack Black, Paul Rudd, and Steve Zahn are all in terrific form… Gormican and co-writer Kevin Etten clearly understand how to let these performers riff and let their natural charisma and on-screen chemistry drive the film.
— Roberto Tyler Ortiz, Geek Vibes Nation
Together, [Black and Rudd] are dynamite, bouncing off each other with the kind of ease that only comes from performers who know exactly when to undercut sincerity with absurdity – and when not to.
— Peter Gray, The AU Review
For a while, [the movie] coasts by on the pre-sold likability of its cast.
— Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter
The true scene-stealer – the film’s shock MVP, without question – is Selton Mello as Santiago Braga, a snake handler whose every line delivery feels like it’s arriving half a beat too late and twice as hard as expected.
— Peter Gray, The AU Review
Mello is an amusing scene stealer as the grief-stricken anaconda trainer.
— Pete Hammond, Deadline Hollywood Daily
Of the entire cast, the only performance that comes close to being genuinely funny is Selton Mello.
— Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network
The best surprise is Newton, who doesn’t have a noted reputation for comedy… She successfully fights the script’s extreme lack of development for Claire to get in some delightful moments.
— Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence
The new film dutifully serves up the callbacks you’d expect, including a cameo that made my audience clap.
— Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter
Some genuinely fun cameos express great reverence for Luis Llosa’s original movie.
— Maxance Vincent, Loud and Clear Reviews
There are a few easy-to-predict cameos, but they’re painfully obvious and already spoiled by the trailers.
— Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network
The movie could have really used some of that anarchic, industry-skewering Tropic Thunder energy.
— Peter Debruge, Variety
The movie is better [when it’s smaller in scope]. Any time it gets bigger than that, it largely suffers.
— Spencer Perry, ComicBook.com
It understands why nostalgia is comforting, why it’s dangerous, and why we keep circling back to the things we loved when we were younger. The problem is that the movie never quite figures out how to finish that thought once the snake slithers fully into the frame.
— Roberto Tyler Ortiz, Geek Vibes Nation
Take this cast and put them in a project about making independent cinema, free from any other obligations, and you almost immediately wind up with something that’s far less uneven.
— Joey Magidson, Awards Radar
Anaconda opens in theaters on December 25, 2025.
